Beijing Municipal Cultural Heritage Bureau announced yesterday
that one million scraps of broken porcelain, some of which may be
up to 800 years old, were unearthed from a construction site in the
capital in late July.
"It is very rare for a single pit to contain so many different
types of porcelain, and the pieces seem to have come from at least
seven ancient kilns, including Jingdezhen, Junyao and
Dehua," said Zhu Zhigang, the Beijing Academy of Cultural Heritage
Studies researcher who led the excavation.
The discovery has raised some puzzling questions for
archaeologists, such as the origins of the pit itself and the
long-lost techniques used in making the porcelain, according to the
academy.
Yu Ping, an expert in porcelain studies, said most pieces in the
pit were made during the early and middle period of the Ming
Dynasty (1368-1644), and some could date back as early as the Yuan
Dynasty (1206-1368).
"Their glaze and painted patterns are very delicate and vary
quite a lot, which provides a lot of material for research," said
Yu, also the deputy director of the cultural heritage bureau.
Standing in front of over 1,000 boxes containing the excavated
pieces, she added: "To reassemble complete sets from the numerous
scraps will be very hard. We need much more investigation and study
to solve these puzzles, especially how the pit came into
being."
According to Zhu, the pit?-- 7.8 meters long, 5 meters wide
and 4.3 meters deep?-- was found during a construction project
in Xicheng District's Maojiawan area, located in what was the
northwest corner of the imperial city in the Ming Dynasty
(1368-1644).
"The discovery of the pit also provides us with important clues
to the development of Beijing," Zhu said, who also took part in
excavations at several Olympic construction venues, where more than
1,000 sets of earthenware, goldware, porcelain and jadeware have
also been unearthed.
According to the Law on Cultural Relics Protection,
archaeological investigation and excavation must be done before a
major construction project is carried out.
(China Daily September 1, 2005)